The Geography of the Puranas c13.s1.1

c13.s1.1

In the Purāṇas the discussions on the difficult questions of cosmogony, cosmology and cosmography show keen and vivid thinking because they lie on the border between philosophy and theology. It appears at first that the Purāṇics were more interested in attempting to solve the insoluble mysteries of the Supreme Being and the Universe than they were in the world of Nature immediately surrounding them. The first sections of all the Purāṇas give an account of creation discussing all its aspects in full detail. During the period between the 5th and 13th centuries A.D., immense and weighty volumes were written as commentaries on the earlier account of Creation in the Sacred Books, in which complicated arguments were elaborated with the finesse of scholastic logic. In an age of faith, as the period under review was, the religious enthusiasm of the artisan-architect was transmuted into lofty and majestic temples while that of the theologian turned to the elucidation of the words of the Vedas. To analyse these words, to comment upon their minutest details, to reveal the meaning that presumably lay behind them, was not only a work of piety and devotion but an absorbing pastime for keen-witted thinkers. In the more concrete realism of natural science, this period is characterised by keen observation and creative thought but in matters of cosmogony and cosmography which were highly controversial and classical, opinions were either enthusiastically defended as casting light on the Vedas or else bitterly attacked as subversive of all truth. The Purāṇic concepts excel all previous and subsequent literature on these subjects.